March 3, 2023 “We’ve had several cases that, at first, we thought we’re never going to be able to solve this, but our guys stuck to it,” said a member of Cobb County Police Department’s Homicide unit.
Source Officer.com News
A Georgia police department has closed all of its murder cases for the past two years.
Since March 2021, the Cobb County Police Department has solved all of its homicides, WAGA-TV reports. In that time, the county has seen 62 murders, and detectives have closed them all, a rate that far outstrips the national average.
“It’s around a 54% clearance rate nationally,” said Chief Stuart VanHoozer.
During this run, Cobb County detectives have been able to solve most murders in around 48 to 72 hours. But other cases have proved a little more harder to crack.
“We’ve had several cases that, at first, we thought we’re never going to be able to solve this, but our guys stuck to it,” said Lt. Tommy Noles, a member of the department’s Homicide unit.
VanHoozer credits new technology as providing a huge advantage for detectives. The department’s Real Time Crime Center, in particular, gives officers access to hundreds of surveillance cameras in the country, and facial and license plate recognition readers are another set of data-driven eyes for police.
“License plate recognition is probably the strongest tool we have that we use,” said VanHoozer. “We have Flock cameras all over the county.”
But the human factor is the biggest driving force behind the department’s perfect record when it comes to murders. Few cases would be able to go from red to black without the persistence and skills of the department’s detectives.
“They sacrifice hours and hours, with no sleep, and they exhaust all leads without fail,” said VanHoozer.